Why A Canadian Sold His 2-Month Old 2021 Corvette C8 For A 2019 Civic Type-R

Two years on from launch, the Chevrolet Corvette C8 remains a seriously hot ticket. Demand far outstrips supply and some Corvette fans have resorted to paying massively over MSRP to buy used and skip the waiting list.

But one Canadian Corvette enthusiast who was lucky enough to get a relatively early allocation for a new C8 has decided to swap his mid-engined American supercar for a front-wheel drive Japanese hot hatch.

We’ve driven the latest 306-hp Type-R and can attest to how much fun it is to drive, but choosing it over a 495-hp Corvette seems like a pretty radical move. There is, however, method to the C8 owner’s apparent madness.

We can presume that Reddit user The_Exia didn’t just buy his C8 because he wanted the next hot thing. He already owned, and still owns, a C6 Z06 Corvette. And he claims that, good as the C8 was, including an ability to achieve an incredible 34 mpg on the highway, he never found the automatic-only mid-engined car as much fun as his manual Z06, and would often let his friends drive the newer Corvette while he took the older one.

We believe this is the poster’s Civic at Tony Graham AutoEdge, Ottawa

Credit: Chevrolet

“I still preferred my Z06, it’s more fun thanks to the manual, it sounds better, it’s louder and it just puts a smile on my face,” he wrote on a Reddit post.

But, there’s more to it than that. The poster explained he is already waiting for delivery of a Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, which should happen some time next year, and rather than wait until 2022 to trade in the C8, by which time values might have finally softened, he decided to take advantage of the above-list used prices Corvettes are currently commanding.

Although the exact numbers are muddied by the trade-in to buy the C8 in the first place, according to The_Exia his Corvette would have cost $108k CAD as a new car if bought with cash, and he traded it in for $116.4k CAD. “Thanks to the absurd trade-in value I was actually owed money back so I now have zero car payments,” he wrote.

Another Corvette C8 for sale in Canada

But he claims he could have sold it privately for $120k CAD, and even speculates that if he’d ordered a basic zero-options C8 for $85k CAD he could have still sold it for close to $120k CAD because “most sales don’t really seem to care about the options on the car.” We found several similar Corvettes for sale in Canada, including the one pictured above, for up to $130,000 CAD.

And despite some issues with the climate control and some crappy budget tires, it doesn’t sound like he’s finding the Civic Type-R too much of a climb-down, claiming he chose it to serve as his stopgap until the Blackwing arrives because it’s fun and will hold its value well.

Yeah, he’s not wrong about that last bit. Like the Corvette C8, the Civic Type-R, which lists at $46.2k CAD new ($38k USD) is in high demand, as The_Exia admits in a different Reddit post about Cadillac GT5-V Blackwings.

“I just bought a 2019 Type-R, I paid what is basically sticker price for a two-year old car, Type-R prices are crazy,” he says.

“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” we say.